Clowning Around

The clown frowned and sighed heavily. His quilted elbow pressed into his thigh, creasing it so as to make a little crater. His head tilted to the side, his left palm holding his tan jaw. He the circus clown was down, sad. Unhappy!        

He slid his hazel eyes to the sheet of paper staring back at him. “What do I write?” He moaned.    

“Writer’s block?”          

The clown nodded, smiled and looked hopefully up at his friend. Scarlet was making coffee, but her short stature didn’t block him from seeing her wiggling eyebrows. She let out an airy laugh and told him maybe he should switch for a tuxedo. “Lose the tie-dye hairdo. Maybe you’ll come up with something then!”       

Turning around with the cup of coffee releasing thin grey smoke, Scarlet laughed again and set it down on a lone coffee coaster on the small birch framed glass table. She fell relaxedly into the ugly brown chair, her chocolate curls causing this much less attractive piece of furniture to fade into the background. “Are you giving me that to read?”   

The clown creased his forehead. “I just don’t know what to write.” He ran a big hand over his bald head. “I…”  

“Maybe you’re out of inspiration!” She reached for her worded mug. “After coming back from the circus, Clown, you must really have something to describe.”

“Yeah, I should!” 

“Well,” the brunette gestured with her free hand as she sipped her coffee, “think about the audience! Are they thrilled about any of the acts put on by the acrobats?” She slapped a knee, almost sputtering. “Get it, acrobats acting?” 

“Sure! But now that I’m back from the circus, at least for now, I don’t want to write about any old thing I’ve done for the last thirty years. I want to liven up something I’ve never even really thought about before!”

 “The circus is the thing of the past.” Scarlet stated suddenly, indifferently. She cleared her throat, and rose. The clown jumped up and stared at her.

“Scarlet, I thought you were going to help me!” He cocked his head. “Are you doubting my talent?”

She shook her head and pulled at her scarlet button-down coat. “Just helping you!” A pale finger lashed the air. “You see this chair?” 

“Y—”

The hand opened. “What if it disappears?”

The clown replied, but Scarlet whipped her other wrist in front of her and widened her eyes. “I got to go!” Grabbing her briefcase, she then shoved the door open and hurried down the dark corridor of the building. The clown watched her, a frown running down opposite sides of his chin. He closed his eyes just as the entrance door banged shut, and sighed pitifully. 

For himself?  

He straightened up and jerked his eyes at the piece of paper he had apparently let fallen. The paper ironically curved upwards like a smile. The clown struggled to do so. He just wanted Scarlet to help with ideas—no, come up with ideas for him. He had done only child-friendly jokes and pranks after working for the ringmaster for three decades. He was a jolly fellow but with the children, because he didn’t like entertaining big crowds. So… he was narrow-minded?  

“I do have imagination!” He insisted to himself. But did he? He shied away from presenting himself to everyone. Just the children were his comfort zone. He was a clown, for Pete’s sake! But did that mean he had to overcome his hesitation and entertain the rest of the circus?    

The clown snatched the paper and scribbled some words between the blue thin lines. Scrawling until an idea blossomed into a story, the clown wrote faster, gluing his pen to the page and saturating it with words like light, fixture, daylight, Daylight Savings Time, gravity, I don’t know, Scarlet, joyful, love. Words of affirmation and constitution. Words of friendship meant just between Scarlet and himself. Words of warning, words of foreboding.

 “What I’m writing doesn’t matter!” The clown moved his hand uninterruptedly, his pen going up, down and swiveled around as I’s were dotted and t’s were crossed. He finally released his pen, letting it breathe like one does when he pulls his head from underwater after quenching his dehydrated throat for so long. Then it kissed the paper again, moving along the page and then being freed only to attach back once more after the clown flipped to the back. 

His excitement heightened at possibly sharing this piece of written art with Scarlet. The clown decided one more word would work. With three and a half pages of eligible, hopefully legible writing, the clown shot up from his chair and thrust the door open. “Scarlet, Scarlet!” He cried, hoping maybe she’d have stopped for some reason. Once outside, he saw her from over across the three-lane highway, her curls waving in the cold wind like a hand beckoning him.

“Scarlet!” The clown shouted, waving his free hand. Yellow taxis honked at him and other cars blasted their horns at a crazy person zooming right in front of Houston’s city traffic. She turned around and shielded her eyes with a hand. “I know you can hear me!”    

Scarlet shook her head and dropped her hand. But when shoes scuffed the blocked concrete floor after stomping up three little flights of stairs, she brushed her hair out of her face and turned towards him. The clown stopped to take a couple of deep breaths and then asked her if she wanted to read his story. He actually held the paper out, and it flapped in the wind, snapping and then crinkling until it folded over. The clown frowned.

“I thought…” he stepped closer, dropping his hand. “I thought you had somewhere to go.”

“I wasn’t needed anymore.” She squinted, hair whipping all over the place. “You’re done with the story?”

“Yes!” He held the flapping paper out to her. “You have time.”

“Actually, I…” She pulled out her cell phone and covered it with a hand. “I got to go now.” Before the clown could ask what she was in such a hurry about now, Scarlet scurried to her car, briefcase clutched in her hand. She soon pulled out from the space and turned the window down. The clown’s plastic red shoes smacked the ground as he hurried up to her. Halting, he took a breath and bent down. “Scarlet—what’s wrong?”

He asked this, because her mouth struggled to smile. 

“I’m heading something.” It twitched some more and she shifted towards her wheel. Putting her foot on the gas pedal, Scarlet looked over at the clown, her eyes shining with deep reluctance. “Hail down a taxi. Someone will pick you up.”

“Why?” He wondered, puckering his eyebrows.

“Just do it!” She hurried. He stepped back and watched as the scarlet Jeep drove down the ramp, made an upside-down U and then descended another one.

Why…?

But then the clown shrugged and sauntered off. He wished he had a pocket to call his story home. The wind picked up, so the clown gripped the paper and tucked his hands into his armpits. He actually just wanted to get home and make himself a nice cup of hot chocolate. Never mind the taxi. But as the clown walked down the flights of stairs, a cab beeped and beeped, pulling up by the sidewalk.

The clown, baffled, stared at it as he hurried towards it. It honked again, and he yanked the door handle, clambered inside and shook his head. “What’s going on?”

The cab driver turned around and smiled, raising his eyebrows. “You’re Clown!” He shifted and extended a gloved hand.

“Uh, yes.” Clown slowly reached up and shook this stranger’s hand firmly. “Where are you taking me?”

When Mr. Taxi Driver said “Somewhere,” the clown told this man to take him to his apartment building at N. Market Street and between Sugar Street and Plum Road. The man then stated “Yes,” which perplexed the clown more than ever. He tried quizzing the driver, but he just kept shaking his head and saying that he couldn’t tell yet.

The clown sat back and clicked on his seatbelt after extending it across his body. He focused outside, trying to get his mind off this crazy reality. But even as he put his hands under his thighs, he couldn’t keep them from shaking a little, nor could he blink slower. He watched with a dry mouth as more shops and people passed by. He bit his lip. How he wanted to be curled up in his apartment, drinking that hot chocolate, knowing Scarlet, a few doors down, was reading his story! 

The clown felt the car slow down and then stop. He demanded, “Get me to my apartment!”

“Can’t tell you—it’s a secret!” The man asserted. “Trust me!”

The clown grit his teeth together. We go anywhere weird, I’m calling the cops. He pressed his lips together, sliding his eyes everywhere, narrowing them at every streetlight, every person, every sign. When the driver wheeled the taxi into a wide, dirty, graffiti-decorated alleyway, the clown ducked and scanned slowly from the brick furniture shop to the left to the gravel road parallel to this one to a restaurant with orange and yellow lights shining glaringly down now right in front of him. He stared up at the double glass doors, taking in the white concrete stairs as well as the bar and stools.

“Sir, I think you missed the turn?” The clown’s tongue suddenly froze, unable to finish his sentence. Icy terror flooded his mouth, cutting off more words.

The cab driver chuckled warmly. He just kept going down the road, the gravel growling soft as the wheels rolled carelessly right over them. The clown continued to study his surroundings as the taxi pulled up next to the restaurant’s corner. The man informed the clown that they would have to walk back to the double doors. 

“This place is completely empty!” the clown panicked, his voice screechy.

“You’ll just have to sit tight.”

The clown now narrowed his eyes and pursed his lips tighter as the cab driver snapped off his seat belt and pushed open his door. He then rounded the car, grabbed another man’s hand and shook it hard. Walking beside the man, both of them walked back to the front steps, getting bathed in the restaurant’s orange and white lights. The clown dared to lean way over and study the people inside. Some were filling their champagne glasses with an ugly brown liquid, but others tipped their heads back and slapped their hands on their knees, a smile wide across one side of their face. 

The clown exhaled. It’s just a bar, right? How scary could it be? We’re in the city, and taxi drivers pass restaurants with bars all the time. He lowered his shoulders, relaxing them. Maybe… this isn’t so bad. Then he looked around for the taxi driver. He was nowhere to be seen.    

“Where’d he go?” The clown moved his head all around. “Where is he?”

Relief melted this fear but then replaced it with little explosions of confusion as the taxi driver ran down the stairs and up to the clown’s door. The clown looked left and saw hordes of people coming around the corner with suppressed smiles and serious-looking eyes. The clown looked at his driver, but he grinned wide and opened the door.

“Happy Birthday!” 

Whistles, whoops, congratulatory remarks and excited screams from some children saturated the evening air. The clown, mouth hanging open, sprang out of the cab and smiled at everyone’s bright eyes and cheery smiles.  

“How’d you guys…?” 

“It was all Scarlet’s idea!” Someone cried as everyone headed back towards the restaurant and up the stairs. As they all poured into the place and semi-circled a long black marble table, the clown searched for Scarlet and found her with open arms and eyes dancing with joy.    

“Happy Birthday!” She wrapped her arms around him, he returning the warm embrace. Squeezing hard, he whispered into her ear. Then he announced, “I never thought you’d stay for such a party!”       

Scarlet blushed and nodded. Then the clown gasped profoundly as five servers carefully carried a five-layered cake towards a decorated center table. One child suddenly ran in front of the two front servers, causing them to tilt the cake a bit. But finally, they inched the massive dessert in front of the clown and then clapped for him.

Everyone sang Happy Birthday, and then the clown cut the cake, commenting on the beautiful clown and balloon icing decorations wrapping around like a spiral stairway across the snow-white frosting. Once conversation rose like smoke and forks sunk into the dessert, Scarlet beckoned the clown over. “Yes?” He turned from chatting with a couple of people and knitted his eyebrows together. “Everything okay?”

“I just did this for you.” Concern flickered through her coffee eyes.

“Huh?” He excused himself and leaned forward. “You—”

“I’m just doing this for you. After the big ‘Happy Birthday,’ I wanted to go back home. To celebrate between just you and me.”

“Uh…” The clown eyed the medium-loud room. “What do I do with them?”

“Just tell them,” she whispered instructionally, “that Big Clown and Tiny Clown can entertain them. The party’s really over, right?”

“I’m not just going to leave!” The clown hissed, cutting his eyes to her. “I’m the birthday person. Besides, they’re my friends!”

Scarlet’s eyes pleaded with him. “I want to celebrate between just you and me!”       

He pursed his lips, straightened and looked over. “Alright, everyone!” The clown grabbed a spoon and banged it gently against someone’s glass. The chatter lowered and then stopped, all eyes now on the celebrated. “If you turn around, Tiny Clown and Big Clown,” he waved wildly to two silly-looking clowns in the back, “will light up a show!” 

Everyone turned around to see two blue and white face-painted entertainers with streaks of red and black and yellow down their already magenta poke-a-dotted costumes. Tiny widened his eyes and spread his hands around in circles. A couple of giggles escaped some girls’ mouths and laughter erupted from a few older children as Big Clown crashed backward onto the wooden floorboards, kicking his legs and flailing his arms. Tiny Clown stomped towards him and swung him around like they were in a wrestling match.

When Big Clown and Tiny Clown started juggling eggs, Scarlet and the clown maneuvered their way outside, Scarlet muttering she’d rather walk instead of distract the taxi driver. They let the door go softly and then half-ran down the steps. Turning the corner, they almost pounded the concrete and then the asphalt on their next turn. Scarlet yanked her coat closer to her.

“So you just threw me a party simply because you knew I liked parties.” The clown guessed. They both hurried under metal apartment staircases. 

“Well—yes and no. I really wanted the party to be between you and me only. But I know you have all these close friends, so you—” they took a wide turn. “—would want to celebrate it, especially with those people.”

Scarlet slid to a stop, and the clown almost crashed into her. “Sorry!” She apologized, seeing the clown stagger back. “I—”

“You what?” The clown slammed his hand on her metal apartment door, and Scarlet jolted. She slid her eyes up to the clown’s furrowed eyebrows and fiery eyes. “What do you want, Scarlet? I’m the birthday person. It’s my party! I’m with my friends—they’re great people to be with.” He pinched his face. “What’s going on?”

“Clown!” Scarlet implored. She whirled right around. “You’re not the most confident person, either!”

“Putting my own ideas down on paper again has helped me—I don’t want to just depend on you anymore. I also want to learn that I can entertain more people than just children and my close friends.” He smiled big.

She gave him a reluctant grin.     

“Come on. I’ll read you my story.”  

While she made herself comfortable with a Snuggie, he went into the kitchen to make her a steaming cup of coffee. The clown laughed when he saw Scarlet almost buried in the thick cotton blanket. He set her coffee down on a coaster on the little marble table between the couch and her beige Lay-Z-Boy armchair.

“I wanted you to really be excited about Tiny and Big!” She unwrapped herself and reached for her mug, thanking him. 

“Hm.” The clown nodded half-interestedly. He plopped down opposite her on the stuffy sofa and sipped loudly. Then he returned his mug down onto the table. “My story.” The clown patted his clothes. “Did you hap—I mean, it could’ve blown away.”     

“Oh!” Scarlet shot her hand beneath the blanket. “I saw your story on the cab seat. So I grabbed it and stuffed it in my pocket as soon as you stepped out.” She leaned forward, extending it with two fingers. 

“Thank you!” The clown fell back down, took it and then opened it. Picking up the mug again, he began when Scarlet’s grin created small dimples in her slightly round face. “So—right in the middle of my circus act, a mouse suddenly squeaked and ran right towards an elephant…”   

The two friends hooted and chortled, Scarlet telling him he should present this story to the circus when he returns.

“Yeah!” The clown bobbed his head up and down, and then he felt eyes on him.

“What?” He looked at her.

“It’s just…” Scarlet sniffed and rubbed her nose. “I’m afraid I might lose you once you go back.”   

The clown went around the table and sat down beside her. He wrapped his arms around her Snuggie shoulders and pulled her to himself. “I’ll always put you first!”